


Dreams, Nightmares, and Reality

by livtontea



Series: Reginald Die Challenge [1]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Author Takes Liberties With Klaus's Powers, Body Horror, Child Abuse, Dreams, Dreams and Nightmares, Dreamsharing, Dreamwalking, Gen, Italics, Like, Luther Hargreeves Is Less Of An Asshole, Murder, Nightmares, No Incest, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting, a fuckton of italics, but it's super vague, im not even kidding i think this whole thing is just italics, kiiiinda but not really, last but not least a little bit of, mildly fucked up shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-13
Updated: 2019-06-13
Packaged: 2020-05-02 05:17:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19192555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livtontea/pseuds/livtontea
Summary: Where is it? Why hasn’t he found it yet?“You’ll never make it,” a voice says. He turns around and is met face to face with an owl, except the owl is wearing a monocle and speaking with somebody else’s voice.





	Dreams, Nightmares, and Reality

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write some dream fuckery. I'm good at that.
> 
> Uhh some of the stuff is kinda disturbing, (to a general audience, I'd assume) so beware. Otherwise, enjoy :–)

_He walks down stairs and through doorways, into attics and basements, looking. He’s looking for it, but he can’t find it. Where is it? He doesn’t know._

_The walls are looming above him, reaching up into the sky. He can’t see the ceiling even if he tilts his head back, looking up and up to where everything turns grey._

_Could it be there? He turns and sees a staircase, brown steps leading upwards. He lightly places a foot on the first step, testing the sturdiness. It doesn’t break under him._

_He steps onto the staircase and starts climbing. At one point the staircase becomes an escalator, and then a ladder. He doesn’t stop climbing. He has to get up to the top, he needs to find it._

_He takes a break on a conveniently placed ledge after what could have been minutes or hours of climbing. As soon as he regains his breath and starts climbing again the ledge disappears._

_Where is it? Why hasn’t he found it yet?_

_“You’ll never make it,” a voice says. He turns around and is met face to face with an owl, except the owl is wearing a monocle and speaking with somebody else’s voice._

_“You’ll fail. You’re a failure. Work harder,” says the owl. “You’re the first, the team leader. You’re being weak. Start training.”_

_“I’m not weak,” he argues. “I’m still climbing, see?”_

_The owl hoots. It brings its beak up close to his face. “But you haven’t climbed all that far, have you? Whether you’re still climbing or not is irrelevant.”_

_He looks down, and where moments ago he was sure he saw swirling greyness there’s now a floor. He’s barely a yard off the ground._

_“No,” he whispers. “I don’t understand.”_

_The owl’s sickening laughter scrapes at the inside of his eardrums. “Failure.”_

_The owl twitches, and suddenly he’s surrounded by two owls, then three, then four. Then he can’t see anything but the rungs of the ladder he’s clutching and owls. Each owl adjusts its monocle with a clawed leg and starts talking._

_“Failure. You’re a failure.”_

_“Weak.”_

_“Why did you stop, boy?”_

_“No progress.”_

_“Again. Do not fail this time.”_

_“Failure.”_

_“Failure.”_

_He’s surrounded by a cacophony of voices, each one ponding at his skull. “No,” he tries to shout. “Stop it!”_

_But his voice is overridden by the many others, and nobody can hear the little boy’s cries. The owls are changing, their feathers growing longer and their voices becoming louder and distorting._

_The boy whips his head around, but everywhere he looks he’s met with owls. But now they don’t look like owls, now they all look different. Some look like dark splotches of fear, and some resemble hungry eyes. Others are glinting teeth in gaping mouths silently telling him they want to rip him apart._

_There is one not-owl, a tall man holding a cane and the same monocle perched in front of his eye. His eyes are closed, but he looks angry. Everything about him looks angry._

_A sparrow lands on the man’s shoulder and tilts its head at the boy. In its beak, it’s holding it, but the feelings the boy has attached to it are faded and worn. Instead, the smell of fear and emptiness is curling like smoke around it, until the gaseous substance worms itself inside of it._

_The boy whimpers, and the sparrow chirps in delight. The voices are not gone, they have only grown louder. He can’t hear anything but the screaming and wailing of his own panic in his ears._

_The man’s eyes open._

_“Number One!” he barks over the clamor of the owls-but-not, shaking his cane. “I thought I told you to be in bed!”_

_“I was,” cries the boy. “I was in bed and now I don’t know where I am!”_

_“Excuses,” scoffs the man. “I do not appreciate lies and the liars who tell them, Number One.”_

_“I’m sorry,” he trembles. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to! Please help me!”_

_“Foolish children such as yourself do not deserve my help.” The man’s cane hits the ground, causing the boy to flinch. “Or anybody else’s, for that matter.”_

_The sparrow trains its dead eyes on the boy. It jolts, and then without warning flies into his face. The boy yelps, and tries to swat it away._

_He’s let go of the ladder. He starts falling, falling down and down, and suddenly the floor isn’t as close as it was a minute ago, or even before that. Instead the floor is gone, and he’s falling, falling through the grey abyss until he can feel his bones start to shatter and his neck snap backward and-_

_+_

_He’s in a room. The walls are covered in paintings. He recognizes it to be Mom’s charging area._

_He nods to himself. If the charging chair and the paintings are here, then so must be Mom. He starts looking._

_He checks the chair. No Mom. Checks under it. Nope. Maybe Mom is cleaning one of the paintings? He scans the walls, but no luck._

_Maybe Mom is just in another part of the house. He looks around, but there’s no doors. No exits at all. There’s only walls and paintings and the chair._

_That’s not how it’s supposed to look like. And he still doesn’t see Mom._

_“Mom?” he calls out softly. “Mom. Where are you?”_

_Nobody answers him. Suddenly he feels a sharp stab of doubt in his chest. Maybe he’s wrong, and Mom isn’t here after all, and he’s alone._

_Alone, alone. He can almost hear voices singing._

_You’re alone._

_“Mom?” he tries again._

_“Luther, there you are!”_

_Mom's voice is different. It's… it's like she's behind a wall, or a sheet of plastic._

_"Mom? Where...?"_

_"Over here, silly." He looks up and sees her. She's in a painting, one arm draped over the back of her chair. Mom's looking down at him from above with a smile pressed into her lips._

_When he doesn’t say anything, she laughs. “Honey, are you alright?”_

_He shakes his head. “Mom, why are you-”_

_“Oh, no need for that. Come on now, up you go.”_

_“Mom-”_

_“Shush,” she says, and suddenly he can’t speak. “Now come on. Your father is not the most patient of men.”_

_He feels himself being lifted into the air, higher and higher until he’s at the same level as the painting. He tries to struggle, tries to push himself away from Mom’s oily smile, but it’s no use._

_“Mom, no, I don’t want to-”_

_“Luther,” she cuts him off once more. Her voice has lost all of its happy playfulness and has changed to something completely different. Mom herself has changed too. Half of her face is slowly melting off while the other half’s skin is peeling away, leaving metal and wiring bare._

_“Stop it. Your father is waiting.”_

_He flails his arms and pushes against whatever is forcing him inside the picture frame._

_If I go in, I’ll die, he realizes. If I’m inside the picture frame, I’m not real anymore._

_The thought makes him struggle harder, hands and feet pushing against any hard surface he can find. He can’t find one. There’s just air and the picture frame._

_He can feel cold hands push at his shoulders, his back, his head. They force him closer and closer to the frame, and there’s nothing he can do._

_Mom – or not Mom – reaches out of the frame and grabs onto his forearms. Her eyes, what’s left of them, are sad. She smiles apologetically, and whispers, “I’m sorry, honey. I’m so, so sorry. It’s for your own good.”_

_He’s in the frame, and then he is no more._

_+_

_His brother sits in front of him. He’s tossing a box of cards up and down, catching it with one hand._

_“Hey.” Klaus lazily salutes him with two fingers._

_“Hi,” he says carefully. “Do you know why I’m here?”_

_Klaus shrugs. “Same as me, I guess.”_

_“Why are you here?”_

_“I dunno. Same as you.”_

_“That doesn’t make sense.”_

_Klau shrugs again. “You’re dreaming, it doesn’t have to.”_

_“I am?” he says, surprised._

_“Yeah.”_

_“Oh. How do you know?”_

_Klaus snorts. “Well, I’m here, aren’t I?”_

_He wrinkles his forehead. “What do you mean?”_

_“Luther. It doesn’t matter. You’ll forget this, anyway. When you wake up.”_

_“How are you so sure of that?”_

_Klaus stops throwing up the deck and clenches his hand around it. “How do you know you’re unnaturally strong, Luther?”_

_“Dad-”_

_“No no,” interrupts Klaus. “Dad did a lot of things. He tested us. He told us and each other what we could do. I know you know that. I asked how you know.”_

_“How I–? That doesn’t make sense either.”_

_Klaus sighs and rolls his eyes. “To you, maybe. Look, think of it this way.”_

_Klaus opens up the deck of cards and throws it up again. The cards fall out, but instead of dropping to the ground they hang in the air. Luther suddenly realizes that they’re tarot cards._

_Noticing Luther’s staring, Klaus smiles. “Cool, huh? Took me a while to learn how to do that. Anyway,” he points to a random card. “Pretend this is your power.”_

_Luther nods. “Okay.”_

_“Great. Now, I’m going to make your power invisible.” Klaus snaps his fingers, and the card vanishes. “Go ahead, touch it.”_

_“But I can’t,” says Luther. “You made it disappear.”_

_“No,” Klaus shakes his head. “That’s where you’re wrong. Touch it. Put your hand where you just saw it.”_

_Luther hesitantly reaches out, and gasps when his hand meets the solid surface of the card. “Oh.”_

_“Yeah. You know it’s there now, right? But you already knew that. You knew it was there when you could see it, and you knew it was there when you couldn’t.”_

_“But I didn’t-”_

_Klaus levels Luther with a tired gaze. “You did. You’ve always known, one way or another. So answer my question. How do you know you’re unnaturally strong?”_

_Luther hesitates. “I just do.”_

_“Correct!” Klaus claps. “Woo! You did it! That’s my answer, too. I just do. I know you’ll forget because this is how it works. Of course, there’s always a small chance you’ll remember, but it’s small. Like, really small. Teensy tiny.”_

_“Oh.”_

_“Yeah. Oh.”_

_“Do you remember?”_

_Klaus reaches out and starts plucking the cards out_ _of the air. “Sometimes,” he says. “I mean, Yeah, I always do, but… It’s like a TV. Sometimes the signal is jumbled, and only bits and pieces of the program get through. Sometimes it’s crystal clear. It depends.” He flicks his wrist in annoyance. “Sometimes the TV is shut off. Like I said, it depends.”_

_“On what?” asks Luther._

_“No clue,” snorts Klaus. “I have absolutely no fucking idea.”_

_“Mm.”_

_“Listen.” Klaus finishes gathering up the cards and puts them back in the box. “I don’t know when I’m going to pop up here again. So in case you don’t see me for a while, try to remember. They’re dreams. You may not think they influence you when you’re awake, but everything does. If your dreams are telling you something, then chances are it's for a reason.”_

_“What are you saying?”_

_“Listen to your dreams,” Klaus says. He smiles and starts tossing the box of cards again. With every throw, he becomes less opaque, and his outlines become blurrier. Soon enough Klaus is gone completely, and Luther is left alone._

_“Listen to your dreams, huh. What good will that do me if I don’t remember any of this anyway?”_

_An echo of Klaus’ laughter bounces off the walls._

_+_

_“Again.”_

_He gasps for air. His lungs are tight and his ribcage feels like it’s squeezing the air out of them. “I can’t,” he pants. “It hurts.”_

_His father wrinkles his nose in disdain. “Do not make me repeat myself, Number One. Again.”_

_“I’m telling you, I can’t!”_

_Father’s cane hits the floor. “Silence! I repeat, again.”_

_He tries to choke down sobs as he takes what’s supposed to be a deep breath. His fingers snugly fit under the car, and he pushes. His muscles feel like jelly._

_The car is lifted about a yard off the ground when his arms give out and it topples down. Father is standing right in the way of the car._

_“Dad!” he yelps, but it’s too late. The car falls over onto his father. “...Dad…”_

_There’s a soft clicking nearing him. A warm hand is placed on his shoulder. He looks up at the owner of the hand and sees Mom smiling down at him. Her smile is warm and kind._

_“Mom?”_

_She nods. “It’s okay, Luther. It’s going to be okay.”_

_+_

_He’s walking. Hasn’t got a clue as to where, but his legs are moving. He sees a little girl with a boater hat on her head. She’s standing silently, looking off into the distance._

_“Excuse me,” he says. “Could you help me find something?”_

_The little girl turns around. “Help you?”_

_“Yeah,” he nods. “I lost something, and I can’t find it. Could you help me?”_

_“Sure,” says the girl. She’s walking with him now. “What did you lose?”_

_He frowns. “I’m not sure. But it was something important.”_

_“Oh,” nods the girl in understanding. “Those are always the worst. Well, lead the way. I’ll help you look.”_

_“Thank you,” he says._

_He keeps walking, now with the little girl at his side, until they reach a tree. It’s tall, some of its branches almost reaching the sky. The trunk of the tree is thin, and the entire thing looks like it’s about to fall over. His legs stop._

_“Oh,” says the little girl. “This must be where you lost your something."_

_He nods, unsure. “I think so.”_

_“Cool. Can you climb?”_

_“Isn’t it dangerous?”_

_The little girl tilts her head. “What do you mean?”_

_He presses his lips together and scrunches up his forehead. “It’s a thin tree.”_

_“No… What makes you say that?” says the little girl, bewildered._

_He looks at the tree. The trunk is thick and strong, and the branches look more secure. “Oh,” he says. “I don’t know, I guess.”_

_She snorts. “That’s silly. You have to look for what’s actually there, not just stop at what you see. Come on, let’s start climbing.”_

_As soon as he puts a hand on the tree, it starts shaking. “Step back,” warns the girl. He does, and the tree shakes harder._

_A man falls out._

_It’s clear that he’s dead. His neck is broken. The monocle he was wearing is shattered next to him in the grass._

_“Huh. That was quick.”_

_+_

_The man has bruises on his neck, and his face is blue. He’s not breathing._

_+_

_The man is pushed off a boat. He can’t swim._

_+_

The man is slammed into a wall. There’s a sickening crack, and then he goes still.

He drops down to the ground, and the boy who just killed his father calmly turns away and walks out of the office.

_+_

_“Heya Luther.”_

_“Oh. You’re here again.”_

_Klaus presses a hand to his chest in mock offense. “Are you saying you’re not happy to see me?”_

_“If that’s what you want to hear.”_

_“Well, I don’t.”_

_“Then I’m not.”_

_“Ugh,” Klaus throws an arm over his eyes. “Since when did you get so cryptic?”_

_Luther snorts. “Since my medium brother keeps infiltrating my dreams.”_

_“Okay, first of all, rude. Second of all, it’s not like you’re trying to stop me. Third of all, I do it to everyone else too, so it really shouldn’t matter.”_

_“Do you at least ask?”_

_“Well of course! I happened to ask you if I could today!”_

_“Well thank you for that, at least.” Luther rolls his eyes and sits down._

_“Do you think Mom is going to take us somewhere tomorrow?”_

_"I dunno. Maybe."_

_"I think she will," announces Klaus. "She can go outside now."_

_Luther nods. The two brothers spend the rest of his dream trading stories of dreams, nightmares, and reality._

**Author's Note:**

> So was this supposed to be Luther-centric? yes. Was it? i think so, i did my best. Did Klaus manage to worm his way in there anyway? also yes.
> 
> I did some [doodles](https://seven-misfits.tumblr.com/post/185553422332/concept-drawings-for-one-of-my-fics-x-in-the) for this one, because i needed to get some of the concepts out.
> 
> Klaus's powers are so cool i like all the headcanons in the fandom, so watch me take them and mush them into this one fic that isn't even about Klaus. Parkour.
> 
> Also if you're about to ask "but why is the whole thing in italics" they're fucking dreams and i do what i want okay
> 
> also also "is the little girl God?" idk man probably but it's up to you


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